Slower paced country living from the heart of the South.

VBS 2009 – Food for Rome Underground

If you are looking for VBS snack ideas in general, please be sure to read my other post with lots of food suggestions. 🙂

Our church is doing Rome Underground this year, and I’ve done quite a bit of searching on the internet for food to fit in with the theme. We feed our workers beforehand, and we also offer the kids a more “substantial snack” since many of them have not had supper before coming to church.

This year I decided to incorporate some traditional VBS fare along with some Roman-inspired food. I told all of our workers that we’ll be expanding our taste buds! 😀

First, I’ll give you a run-down of what our menu will basically look like, then provide recipes for any particular dish.

1) Quesadillas with hummus and veggies. Quesadillas made with fajita size flour tortillas, shredded cheese and taco meat – if you have large griddles, you can do 6 or so at a time – spray griddle with non-stick spray first to make the outside crispy. After cooking, cut each one into 6 wedges using a pizza cutter. These can be made ahead of time and frozen, then reheated to serve. We also do some with just cheese. Serve with a sauce on the side made from Ranch dressing and salsa. Yum!

2) Little sandwiches and tabouli. The secret is to make the sandwiches several hours ahead of time – it really does make a huge difference. For VBS (a crowd of 100 give or take a few), I use 8 packages of hamburger buns, 4 packages each of Oscar Meyer smoked turkey breast and honey ham, a package of sliced American cheese, and some toothpicks. For each sandwich, use one slice each of ham, turkey, and cheese. Put four toothpicks into the top of the sandwich and slice between them cutting the sandwich into fourths (each piece like a slice of pie sort of). Put the sandwiches on a tray, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for several hours.

3) Chicken on a stick, Greek salad, kielbasa/cheese/crackers. The chicken on a stick is really just popcorn chicken threaded onto skewers (check Ebay or restaurant supply – we’re using the 4″ sticks, I think). I plan on serving it with honey mustard on the side. And lest you think I’ve lost my mind on this one, I will be buying the popcorn chicken from Wally World so I’m not standing on my feet for hours frying the little darlings up. 🙂 5 or 6 pounds of popcorn chicken goes a long way when you put 4 or 5 to a stick. I’m not entirely sure about quantity on this yet – I plan on doing a trial run ahead of time with one pound to see how many we can make.

The kielbasa, cheese and crackers is simply Hillshire Farms kielbasa (sausage) thinly sliced with 1/4 slice of American cheese on top of a Ritz cracker. You can make trays of this stuff very easily, and most everyone loves it. It’s a good filler that tastes great! Don’t make it up too far ahead of time or your crackers will go soggy. You can chop everything and have it ready to set up assembly-line style when it’s closer to serving time.

4) Macho Nachos with olives and pickles on the side. My version of Macho Nachos is chips with taco meat, cheese dip (made from 1 – #10 can cheese sauce and 1 can of rotel (undrained) ). You can serve sour cream on the side if you like along with jalapeno peppers . I cook the hamburger meat several weeks ahead of time, season with taco seasoning, and freeze until ready to use. Crockpots work great to keep the meat and cheese dip hot. Green and black olives along with sweet and dill pickles can be served on the side.

5) Hot dogs plus any leftovers from the earlier part of the week. Pan fry the hot dogs unless you want to grill them ahead of time. Keep them warm in a crockpot as you’re serving. Have ketchup, mustard, mayo (yes, some people like it on their dogs!) and relish handy. Sometimes I make up another batch of sandwiches on closing night just in case we have parents who come and would like to eat too. Sometimes we have a lot of leftovers from earlier in the week, sometimes there’s none. Plan to have too much rather than not enough!

I’ve also asked any of our bread makers at church to donate homemade rolls if they’d like. This will be part of the kids’ snacks each night.

We always have kool-aid slushies made from gallons of frozen kool-aid. Let it sit out for a few hours ahead of time and chop up any remaining chunks of ice for an icy treat. The kids LOVE these in the hot summer!

Iced tea is served nightly as well as water.

For the recipes:

Hummus – This is like a middle Eastern bean dip. I use canned chickpeas (garbanzo beans), some of the liquid from the can, about 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 3 cloves minced garlic, parsley, a good drizzle of olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and a healthy dash of cumin and black pepper. Blend all of this together and serve with chips, crackers or vegetables (carrots, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.). Double or triple the recipe if needed. Adjust seasoning to your taste.

Tabouli – Love this stuff! It is a traditional middle Eastern salad which can be eaten alone or with crackers. Below is the recipe as I received it, and I’ll tell you the modifications I made:

For a 1# bag of tabouli wheat (cracked bulgar wheat), put it in a large bowl and run warm water over it to rinse it. Stir it around, let it sit a few minutes, stir it around again and then drain it.

Now, I will confess I cheat a little here and use dehydrated onion and parsley both. It just makes my life easier. 🙂 I like a lot of tomato and cucumber in mine. If you see it’s getting too dry as it soaks up the dressing, you can add some water to it. It shouldn’t be soupy, but it shouldn’t be bone dry either – just lightly moistened. Best if you let it sit overnight before serving.

Combine tomatoes, cucumber, cheese and onion in a bowl. Add olive oil and lemon juice, pepper, oregano, and basil. Toss in a few olives. Adjust seasonings to taste. Easy to double or triple.

Fruit Salad – Just a simple mixture of sliced strawberries, grapes (red and green) cut in half length-wise, pinepple chunks, chopped apples, and mandarin oranges. You can add a some sugar if needed (a couple of tablespoons or so). For adults, I like to sprinkle a few chopped pecans in the mix.

Yadda, yadda, yadda…..

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